Did you know there are books available for you to borrow in the church Parlor? The United Methodist Women have a nice variety of books that everyone, both men and women, are welcome to read.

A check-out card is located inside the front cover of each book. Simply fill in your name and the check-out date and place the card in the wooden box on the top shelf of the bookcase. A pen is inside the box for your convenience.

See a list of the books added to the UMW Reading Library in 2017 here.

2018 United Methodist Women's Reading Program

These are a few of the books that are recommended by the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries. Three copies of each book has been added to the UMW Reading Library located in the church Parlor. Feel free to check out any of these titles, or any of the other books on the shelves in the Parlor.

Category: Education for Mission

Hiding in the Light by Rifqa Bary. Rifle grew up in a devout Muslim home, obediently following her parents' orders to practice the rituals of Islam. But God was calling her to freedom and love and her true faith. He was calling her to give up everything. Leaving Islam for Christianity cost her more than she imagined but gave her more than she could have dreamed. This is a remarkable spiritual journey from Islam to Christianity. It is also a story of how she ran from her father's threats to find refuge with strangers in Florida, only to face a controversial court case that reached national headlines. It is a story of a young girl who made a life-changing sacrifice to follow Jesus and who inspires us to do the same.

Category: Social Action

Push out by Monique W. Morris. The criminalization of black girls in schools. Fifteen year old Diamond stopped going to school the day she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed; she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. Just 16 percent of female students, black girls make up more than one-third of all girls with a school-related arrest. Push out exposes a world of confined potential and supports the growing movement to address the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable and unsafe futures.

Live to Give by Austin Gutwein. Letting God turn your talents into miracles. God doesn't need our help. But He definitely wants it. God is God and there isn't a single problem in the universe that He can't solve. God gave each of us unique talents for a reason. When we offer up the gifts He's given us, He will transform them into something bigger than we could ever imagined.

Category: Nurturing for Community

Detained and Deported by Margaret Regan. Stories of Immigrant Families under fire. An intimate look at the people ensnared by the U.S. detention and deportation system, the largest in the world. On a bright Phoenix morning, Elena Santiago opened her door to find her home surrounded by a platoon of federal immigration agents. Her children screamed as the officers handcuffed her and drove her away. Within hours, she was deported to the rough border town of Nogales, Sonora, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her two year old daughter and fifteen year old son, both American citizens, were taken by the state of Arizona and placed into foster care. The mother's only offense: living undocumented in the United States.

Immigrants like Elena, who've lived in the U.S. for years, are being detained and deported at unprecedented rates. Many who are torn from their families live in detention centers for months or years. Deportees are returned to border town or other foreign nations, but will slip back into the U.S. again, stopping at nothing to get home to their children.

Category: Leadership Development

The Sacred Secular by Dottie Escobedo and Frank and Rob Rynders. How God is using the world to shape the church. This book examines cultural spaces where people are experiencing something sacred; they're in yoga studios, neighborhood potlucks, and TED talks. They see new ways we can convey to people that the church is uniquely sacred and significant and that Jesus is for them. The Sacred Secular nurtures empowerment, creativity, spiritual movement, and the courage to embody the sacredness and substance of our faith. Be prepared to hear contemporary stories like the Apostle Peter discovering God in an "outsider" Cornelius in twenty-first century urban America.

Category: Spiritual Growth

Tattered and Mended by Cynthia Ruchti. The art of healing the wounded soul. For years, society and especially the church required that we hide our brokenness and pretend that all was well, even when it was terribly broken. Now, people have become comfortable with our tattered edges, our character weaknesses, our "old familiar sins," and forgotten that God doesn't intend to leave us in a state of despair. God calls us to something other than the wild pendulum swing from hiding our scars to flaunting them. Rather than resigning ourselves to desperately clinging to shreds of recovery, or discarding the broken, threadbare, scarred relationships, we can engage in the process of healing through Christ. Jesus reclaims what we fear was damaged beyond repair. His soul-mend leaves hope where the wound once was. And we engage in the process of healing, we grow in appreciation of how God tends and transforms wounds.